Fool's Gold

by Steve Stroble

Thanks for breakfast. Right kind of you.”

  “Where are you going next?”

  “Up north, I reckon. There’s a whole lot of forks of rivers there. They feed the Feather, the Yuba, and the Bear. If they don’t pan out there’s always the Trinity River further on up.”

  “If you go by the Feather River, you might see where Sutter has moved to. He said it’s called Hock Farm. He told me he fires a cannon off every time a boat goes by on the river.”

  “You got to talk to Sutter? Boy, you must got a way with words. He wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to me. Can’t say I blame him. He must be thinking I was like the rest of the ones tearing his place up. Well, good luck to you.”

  “Good-bye. And thank you for all your advice.”

  Having passed the confluence of the south fork with the rest of the American River a few miles back, the portion that Thomas now followed was about half the width of what it had been. He now found dozens of miners working their claims instead of the handful that he had passed earlier. Referring to his map, he saw that he would not reach the confluence of the middle and north forks until the next day. When he did reach it the following morning, he was amazed at the number of miners at the confluence. They had surmised that there would be large deposits of gold where two forks of a river meet and dug down five, six feet, and even deeper on their claims.

  Thomas veered off to the left and followed the north fork’s northern bank. He saw no reason to cross over to the other side, as there seemed to be as many miners on either side of it. The borders of the river were now deep rocky canyons instead of hills covered with foliage. Boulders, from ones that were immovable even during the rapid spring runoff down to those that could be removed by miners and mules working together, covered much of the banks and parts of the waterway. About half of the snow pack upriver remained so the icy cold water was still flowing at a dangerous pace. Thomas passed groups of Chinese, Mexicans, and whites as they worked their claims. None seemed to even notice the stranger who had wandered past their worksites. Occasionally he passed signs stating which claims were for sale. He continued uphill and upriver for two miles before finding spots where he might stake a claim. But then he realized that he still had no tools. Sheepishly, he made his way back downriver. None of the 19 miners whom he queried was ready to sell a single one of their tools. Then he spied a sign that read, “Claim 4 Sale.”

  He approached the claim’s two occupants, an older miner who looked to be 65, maybe even 70, and his Chinese helper. “How much for your claim?”

  “Depends. How much you got?” Noticing Thomas’ startled look, the miner extended his hand. “Just joshing you, boy. I’m Lucas McBride. That there is Mr. Yee.”

  Mr. Yee tipped his broad brimmed circular hat. Their friendliness relieved Thomas somewhat.

  “We’d need $100 to pay part of our way through the winter down in Sacramento,” McBride continued. “Like to take it easy away from the diggings for a spell.”

  “But winter is a long way off.”

  “True. Mr. Yee and I would take our time heading back to Sacramento. The way I figure it all these miners stirring up the gravel and sand are bound to be pushing gold dust into the water. The way the rivers running right now at least part of that dust has to get pushed way downstream. We’ll stake claims as we meander downstream. That is if we ever can find a buyer.” His steely gray eyes searched Thomas’ bewildered expression.

  Thomas stared at his boots. “I…I only have $20 left. It cost almost $500 to go from Nicaragua to San Francisco.”

  “So you come by sea, eh? No matter. Can you work a long tom or a sluice?”

  Thomas straightened up as he tried not to betray his ignorance. “I can learn.”

  “Yes. Same as the rest of us had to. Tell you what then. You can buy into the claim for $20. But you’ll have to work twice as hard as normal. Usually there are at least four people who work a long tom or a sluice.”

  After pocketing Thomas’ last coin, McBride introduced him to the sluice, a contraption that was almost 20 feet long and which gradually narrowed from 18 inches wide at the top to 12 inches at the bottom. Two-inch by ten-inch pieces of lumber ran along the sides, nailed to two-inch by 12-inch boards on the bottom. Every foot along the top of the two by twelve’s lay slats one inch wide and high. This created pockets for the heavier gold to be trapped in as sand, dirt, and gravel were shoveled into it and water washed through the sluice, beginning at its most elevated point.

  The water and lighter of the sediment exited out of the bottom. This left behind the weightier materials. To provide the water necessary to flow through the sluice, Yee and McBride had raised the water level next to their claim by building a small dam of rocks. Twigs and thick mud were packed into the crevices between the rocks. They then had dug a trench next to the damned up water. The trench connected to the end of the sluice, which ensured a constant source of water to flow through it. As the river would recede as the summer wore on, the dam, trench, and sluice would be moved ever further into the river to tap its water. This in itself was a Godsend, as it would allow the diggers to search for ever-newer potential deposits of gold. The operation was crude. The work was back breaking. But thus far the claim had yielded a little more than 70 ounces of gold in its three months of operation.

  The two and a half-day walk to get to this claim had left Thomas with sore feet and tired legs. His first half day’s work on the sluice left him with a sore back and neck, cramped arms, splitting headache, and huge appetite. Supper was typical miner’s fare of beans flavored by small chunks of pork. After Thomas had described his flight from Germany as an imagined fugitive, indentured servitude, short stint at the orchard, work as a store clerk in New York, and marriage, he learned about the others. Yee had come to America to make his fortune and then return to China to marry his promised bride.

  “No like America. White men smell bad. Eat too much meat. Make smell bad.” Yee pinched his nostrils with his well-manicured thumb and finger.

  “Lucky we have Mr. Yee to help with the cooking. He always scrounges up some kind of wild vegetables or fruit to add to the pot,” McBride said. “Prevents scurvy, you know. He can also tell the deadly mushrooms from the ones okay to eat. That be extremely valuable when living off the land.”

  “You seem a lot older than the other miners.” Thomas scrutinized his deep wrinkles and missing tooth.

  McBride laughed. “Glory be, boy. I’m only 55.”

  “Oh. You look much older.”

  “Well that’s because I’ve been chasing my pot of gold for 20 years now. If that don’t age you before your time, nothing will.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Well, me dad hailed from Scotland. His parents settled in Ireland. So he falls in love with an Irish lassie. God! What a combination. The only two things the Scots and Irish got in common is their hatred of England and their love of whiskey of many types.”

  Having listened to the story more than once, Yee excused himself and headed to the tent. McBride continued his tale.

  “A Scot married to an Irish is frowned on in Ireland so me parents did the smart thing and come to New York City in 1790. I was born four years later. They raised me right, they did. Went to good schools to become a doctor.”

  “A doctor?”

  “Aye. Had a good living in a small town in New York, too. But then they find gold down in Georgia in 1829. Stayed there for almost ten years ‘til the gold got too scarce. We must’ve dug up the whole Appalachian Mountains down there. Only thing that kept me alive was the gold I got paid to be a doctor to the miners. They get injured and sick quite a bit. Especially when they get to drinking.”

  “Then you came west?”

  “Yes. I thought that since the Spanish conquistadors never found their Seven Cities of Gold that it was up to me to find at least one of them. There was an old prospector I met in Georgia who told me all about them and where to look for them. Went over to Texas. It wasn’t even a state yet. They called it a republic.
Looked all over it and couldn’t find any city of gold anywhere.” He took a swig from his jug and passed it to Thomas. “Isn’t beer such as you Germans favor but it’ll still warm your insides.”

  Thomas accepted the jug and gulped down a mouthful of its foul smelling contents. He coughed violently.

  “It’s homemade, as you can tell. It’s sort of strong, I guess. Anyway, then I wandered on up into the Plains still looking for the seven cities and stayed with a friendly tribe of Indians a while. They laughed when I asked about the cities of gold and said that instead I needed to go out into the wilderness and not eat any food and pray to the Great Spirit until I got a vision. I was hoping their Great Spirit would show me how to find one of the cities of gold. I’m not greedy; I was willing to let others find the other six. On the fourth night I dreams of two great armies on a battlefield that looked miles long. One army had blue on; the other army wore gray uniforms. I still haven’t had time to figure that dream out. But I thought that such a dream was close enough to a vision. When I told the Indians about my dream they shook their heads and said it was a bad omen for the white man. Then I heard they hit pay dirt out here in California so I went to that strike down in the mountains near Los Angeles. Getting there was a trip and a half. There was a lot of desert to cross and Apaches and